Get Organized for Back To School! #CTBacktoSchool #giveaway

Move over Summer, a new school year is almost in session. When a new school year starts, so does the early mornings, jam packed evening activities and overall chaos, until a routine is re-established. One of the things I have learned about being a Mom of school aged children is that you can’t have a successful year, without being organized heading into it. As the last week of summer rushes upon us, I take this week to prepare my house (as well as my kids) for the hustle and bustle that will shortly be upon us.

Here are my tips to help get your house (and yourself) organized for an awesome year back to school!

Clear the Clutter!

I don’t know about you, but during the summer months, my family becomes very lazy. We enjoy the freedom of weekends away and lack of structured schedules, we tend to drop everything from newspapers to receipts to concert tickets rather than putting them away. Heaven forbid, you need to find a pen! Although it allowed us to enjoy our summer, the clutter has made our ‘homework station’ unusable. Items like the Desktop Carousel and Belle 3 Drawer Desktop storage Tower, help me to organize the clutter and give things a proper home.

In the Mudroom, I have added the Veronica Wicker Enterance Bench to keep us organized. Each child has their own cubby to store their hats, mitts and scarfs so they are easy to find on the way out the door in the morning!

Change for a New Season

Swim Suits and flip flops are the ultimate wardrobe for summer, but as the days get cooler and school commences, running shoes, jackets and pants become the new fad. Before school starts, I like to go through my children’s wardrobes and find out what fits, what they need and what I can pack away in Totes for next summer (or the next sibling!). This provides you with an accurate back to school shopping list and helps to prevents those early morning struggles of looking for jeans when the weather actually turns cold. I love using storage devices like the Under Bed Totes to store last seasons clothing, that way if we are hit with an Indian summer, we can yank out the shorts and t shirts easily!

Make Lunch Prep a Breeze

Back to school means back to making lunches! I hate making lunches. Trying to come up with new and interesting healthy, yet cool garbage less lunches is difficult. Throw in picky eaters and it is near impossible. One trick that I have learned with my kids is letting them get involved, it makes the process a whole lot easier and the likelihood of it being eaten becomes more successful. Some tricks I have learned:

Buy a different colour set of food containers for each child. This allows each child to be responsible for their own containers and lessens the arguments over who can use what.

Use the large food storage containers to store granola bars, and other prepacked snacks. Write on the front of them how many can be selected each day. You can control how many you put in there and if it is empty they will have to select something else! (this can also be used in the fridge with prepacked grapes, carrots, etc).

Don’t buy expensive containers! It may seem like you will get more use out of them, but if you have ever visited the lost and found at school, you will know it is the ultimate place for food storage containers to go and die.

Get organized now and you’ll be ready for the best school year ever!

Enter the #CTBacktoSchool Contest

Enter to #WIN a $400 Canadian Tire Gift Card to get you organized this #BTS season!